Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott (L) and shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti had to wait more than a year before being granted access to Yarl’s Wood.
Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Women held at the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre felt desperate at being kept there indefinitely, Diane Abbott said after she was given rare access to the site.

The shadow home secretary was there with Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, as campaigners said around 120 women were staging a hunger strike over conditions and demanding an end to their indefinite detention.

Abbott said it took over a year before she was able to persuade the Home Office to grant her access, despite repeated requests to visit “some of the most vulnerable women in your care and control”.

Before the trip, Abbott said she was told she would not be able to speak to detainees during her tour. However, on her arrival women crowded around her in the corridors wanting to tell her about their situation. Staff made a sports hall available so she could talk to a group of around 30.

One woman said she had lived in the UK for 30 years, had five British children and had been detained for seven months, pending removal to Nigeria, a country where she no longer has any family.

“We met another woman who had been held there for nine months. For most of them, the biggest concern was the amount of time they had been in the centre. The striking thing was that they had no release date,” Abbott said. “These women were clearly desperate. Indefinite detention, with no release date, is just wrong.”

She was accompanied by Home Office staff, Serco staff – the company contracted to run the centre – and G4S, which provides healthcare.

The centre in Bedfordshire holds up to 410 detainees. Abbott said she would raise the issue of the women’s detention in parliament next week. “Many of them are released to the community after spending time in Yarl’s Wood, so why do they need to be in detention?” she asked.

Chakrabarti said she was disturbed by the poor legal advice available to detainees. Women told her that a hunger strike which began on Wednesday was ongoing, although: “Officials flatly denied that there was a hunger strike,” Chakrabarti said. “The women we met felt forgotten.”

Natasha Walter, the director of Women for Refugee Women, said: “Locking women up for indefinite periods in immigration detention is inhumane, unjust and pointless. Our research has shown that the Home Office is breaking its own rules. Most women put in detention after seeking asylum are survivors of gender-based violence, and Home Office rules say that such women should not be detained.”

Following a 2017 inspection of Yarl’s Wood, a report by the chief inspector of prisons said increasing numbers of women were being detained there despite professional evidence that they are victims of torture, rape and trafficking.

The report by Peter Clarke said conditions at the centre had improved since a critical report in 2015, but the fact that two-thirds of the women at the centre were released rather than deported after a period of detention “raised questions about the justification for detention in the first place”.

A Serco spokesman said: “There is not a hunger strike at Yarl’s Wood. There are a number of women who did not take food in the restaurant over the last 48 hours. Furthermore the purchase of food by residents from the shop increased at the same time so we know people were eating. This was fully explained to Diane Abbott and her party.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We were very happy to accommodate Diane Abbott to Yarl’s Wood in her role as shadow home secretary. We respect the privacy and dignity of the individuals detained and it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases.

“We do not detain individuals indefinitely. When people are detained, it is for the minimum time possible and detention is reviewed on a regular basis. Any decision to maintain detention is made on a case by case basis but their welfare remains of the utmost importance throughout.

“Any detainees who choose to refuse food and fluid are closely monitored by on site healthcare professionals. If detainees choose not to eat meals provided by the immigration detention centre, they also have the option of buying food from the centre’s shop.”